Past Quotes
Life is a culmination of the past, an awareness of the present, an indication of a future beyond knowledge, the quality that gives a touch of divinity to matter.Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr.
This only is denied to God: the power to undo the past.Agathon, from Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
Trust no future, however pleasant Let the dead past bury its dead Act, - Act in the living Present Heart within and God overhead.Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
It is not the literal past that rules us, save, possibly, in a biological sense. It is images of the past.George Steine
Our achievements speak for themselves. What we have to keep track of are our failures, discouragements and doubts. We tend to forget the past difficulties, the many false starts, and the painful groping. We see our past achievements as the end results of a clean forward thrust, and our present difficulties as signs of decline and decay.Eric Hoffe
The greatest lesson we can learn from the past... is that freedom is at the core of every successful nation in the world.Frederick Chiluba
The remarkable thing we have is a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past... We cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude.Charles R. Swindoll
Each new historical era mirrors itself in the picture and archive mythology of its past or of a past borrowed from other cultures. It tests its sense of identity, of regress or new achievement, against that past.George Steine
He who controls the past commands the future. He who commands the future conquers the past.George Orwell
Look not mournfully into the Past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the Present. In is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy Future, without fear, and a manly heart.Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
We can pay our debt to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves.John Buchan
I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know no way of judging the future but by the past.Unknown
Reflect on your present blessings, of which every man has many; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.Charles Dickens
Memory is a giggling sprite and will not be tamed. She takes flight the moment the present becomes the past.Real Live Preacher, weblog, 04 - 29 - 04
One must never lose time in vainly regretting the past or in complaining against the changes which cause us discomfort, for change is the essence of life.Anatole France
One day at a time - This is enough. Do not look back and grieve over the past, for it is gone; and do not be troubled about the future, for it has not yet come. Live in the present, and make it so beautiful that it will be worth remembering.Ida Scott Taylor.
If the past cannot teach the present and the father cannot teach the son, then history need not have bothered to go on, and the world has wasted a great deal of time.Russell Hoban
Disconnecting from change does not recapture the past. It loses the future.Kathleen Norris, O Magazine, January 2004
Change is the law of life; and those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.John F. Kennedy
The Past: Our cradle, not our prison; there is danger as well as appeal in its glamour. The past is for inspiration, not imitation, for continuation, not repetition.Israel Zangwill
Danger past, God forgotten.Scottish Prove
The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.L. P. Hartley
The past itself, as historical change continues to accelerate, has become the most surreal of subjects - - Making it possible to see a new beauty in what is vanishing.Susan Sontag
Look not mournfully into the past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the present. It is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy future, without fear.Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
To live in the past or in the future may be less satisfying than to live in the present, but it can never be as disillusioning.R. D. Laing
A strange thing is memory, and hope one looks backward, and the other forward one is of today, the other of tomorrow. Memory is history recorded in our brain, memory is a painter, it paints pictures of the past and of the day.Anna Mary Robertson Moses
When the present is full of gloom, the past becomes haven of refuge that provides relief and inspiration.Jawahar Lal Neheru
Man spends his life in reasoning on the past, in complaining of the present, in fearing future.Antoine Rivarol
At every crossroads on the path that leads to the future, tradition has placed 10, 000 men to guard the past.Maurice Masterlinck
Yes, there is a Nirvanah; it is leading your sheep to a green pasture, and in putting your child to sleep, and in writing the last line of your poem.Kahlil Gibran, Essay on Robert Frost, quoted in N. Y.. Times: Obit - Editorial, April 1982
Critics are like pigs at the pastry cart.John Updike
The past is a source of knowledge, and the future is a source of hope. Love of the past implies faith in the future.Stephen Ambrose, in Fast Company
It is difficult to live in the present, ridiculous to live in the future, and impossible to live in the past. Nothing is as far away as one minute ago.Jim Bishop
Our task is not to fix the blame for the past, but to fix the course for the future.John Fitzgerald Kennedy
We live in the present, we dream of the future, but we learn eternal truths from the past.Madame Chiang
I have had enough experience in all my years, and have read enough of the past, to know that advice to grandchildren is usually wasted.Harry S Truman
Virtue extends our days: he live two lives who relives his past with pleasure.Marcus Valerius Martialis, Epigrams
